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No tears for Wonga…

The emotion of schadenfreude is a particularly English one, apparently. As it’s not an terribly pleasant emotion – the pleasure derived from the misfortune of others – I try to avoid it when I can. Human nature has other plans for the human psyche, and now and then a story will emerge that is heartwarming for all the wrong reasons…

And so to Perpetual Payday Penury provider Wonga, provider of “short term” loans to the desperate and the financially illiterate. Sadly they are “in difficulties” and have been for some time:

They ditched the irritating old rubber people some time ago, and now it seems like the name might be going the same way – if the company survives the tide of new regulation and the incredibly low base rates.

I realise that short-term, payday lenders fill a gap which genuinely exists and always will do. And that if Wonga does go completely Wronga, there will be (and already are) plenty of other companies ready and willing to step in and fill the gap.

Is it too much to hope that in some distant Eutopian future a real possibility exists of social lending, Peer-To-Peer and local credit unions consigning all of the commercial operations to history? Probably not, but I can still dream…